The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now has been getting a lot of bad press lately, with even Republican presidential candidate John McCain going so far as to say during a debate that that the group might be responsible for "one of the greatest frauds of voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy in this country."

The accusations are grave: ACORN is supposedly responsible for turning in a huge number of false voter registration forms, even registering 'Mickey Mouse' in Florida.

What might be surprising to read, given that I'm apparently considered the Democratic Party's mouthpiece on this blog, is that the base accusation is true!  ACORN does in fact turn out a very large number of obviously false voter registration forms!  The problem comes when,  the story stops there without asking 'How?' or 'Why?" 

So let's start with how ACORN conducts business.  Their self-stated goal is to register low-income, minority, working class, and student voters.  Hopefully nobody reading this is actually against that in theory.  How they choose to do that is their one legitimately questionable action:  instead of using volunteers, they hire people to go collect forms, then pay them based solely on the raw number of forms returned.  This is intended to be a second benefit to the community, as they hire unemployed and underemployed members of the community and give them honest work.  However, as you might imagine, it provides a strong incentive to simply sit down, fill out a bunch of fake forms, and turn them in, collecting a decent chunk of money for no real work.

The obvious question then is, if they're going to stick with this model, why don't they check the forms themselves and simply trash the fake ones?  As it turns out, that is actually against the law!  But you might ask (I know I did) what the hell, why would you be required to turn in a clearly fake voter registration form for Mickey Mouse?  <colbert fist shake> BIG GOVERNMEEEEEENT </>*  As it turns out though, there's a good reason to require registration groups to turn in every form, no matter how incomplete or false they may be.  If groups can choose which to turn in to the state, then it opens the possibility (and this happened in the past by both parties before the laws were made) for 'non-partisan' groups to commit real voter fraud by registering a lot of people, then discarding the forms filled out by people registering as the opposite party.  This is particularly egregious because the people who thought they registered to vote won't realize they were not until Election Day, when it's too late to correct.

But still, let's look at Indiana, where ACORN submitted a host of duplicate/fake names, including one for popular sandwich shop "Jimmy John's".  Surely someone must have noticed that Jimmy John, though making particularly delicious Italian subs, is not actually a voter?  As it turns out, despite the article not bothering to mention it, ACORN did, and flagged it as 'Questionable' before submitting it to the state:

"ACORN engages in comprehensive quality control procedures, every card is called through three times.

ACORN flags and turns in three kinds of cards, those that it can verify, those that are incomplete, and those that it flags as problematic. It turns those in labeled in a special way and are very conservative in terms of what it flags as problematic. It has stacks of problematic cover sheets.

The Lake County Board of Elections refused to acknowledge the categories of cards when ACORN turned them in, or sign its paperwork. The Lake County Board knew about the questionable registrations today because ACORN flagged them for the board. For example, the Jimmy John's card is one that a caller had flagged and labeled as problematic. ACORN can get that caller to talk to the press."

That's right, ACORN follows up with phone-calls and verification for every one of its registrations, marking the likely frauds as such, and firing people who submit the fakes. 

But still, there's no question that even dedicated members of ACORN and election boards nationwide will catch every single one.  Duplicates are particularly difficult to catch, since a typo on either SSN will let it pass through a database, and since the person filling out the initial form is often doing so because they're unsure of their status, will happily admit to filling out the form.  So dozens, hundreds, or, let's be generous and say thousands of duplicates and fakes are successfully registered illegally.  Bad certainly, but is it voter fraud?

If Mickey Mouse slips through both ACORN and the Florida safeguards and winds up on the voter rolls, it still doesn't make him real! He's not going to show up and cast a ballot, and even if someone tries, he'll be required to show some form of ID, whether it be driver's license or utility bill made out in his name and address.   Duplicate people registered to the same address can still only vote once.  But don't just take it from me, let's hear from a Republican governor of a swing state with plenty of experience in electoral shenanigans!  Take us away Charlie Crist (R-FL):

"Breaking with the talking points of his fellow Republicans in Washington, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said he does not think voter fraud and the vote-registration group ACORN are a major problem in the Sunshine State.

''I think that there's probably less [fraud] than is being discussed. As we're coming into the closing days of any campaign, there are some who enjoy chaos,'' Crist told reporters."

. . . .

Crist's Republican Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, said he doesn't think ACORN is committing systematic voter fraud. And Crist said that settles the matter because ''I have enormous confidence'' in Browning.

Like ACORN spokesmen, Browning says the false voter registration forms could be blamed on unethical canvassers or on citizens who themselves fill out fictitious voter cards."

Actually that whole article is pretty great, and illustrates better than I did most of the points I was making, including the difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud.  So if you don't trust me, check out the Miami Herald piece.

*nerdiest joke on this blog?  I think so!